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I'm part way through my conversation with Claire Wright at a vegetarian restaurant in Exeter and so far all I've heard is principled, conscientious and honest - it's not what I expect of an elected politician at all.

Maybe the gluten deficient cake has deprived me of vital brain vitamins to ask the right questions. Where is the evasion, the duplicity and partiality that we have come to expect from our elected leaders? I've heard genuine anger and passion about the political landscape of Britain - with special venom reserved for the all-conquering Conservative Party - and candid admissions of human frailty and despair following her recent election defeat, but I want that special sort of derangement and fantasy that our politicians specialise in. Competence and caring is all a bit ethically sourced for me. I'd like mendacity with my ginger cake. Clearly Claire isn't a typical politician, and that is meant as a compliment.

Take this gratuitous act of principle.

During her recent campaign to win the parliamentary seat of East Devon from the Tories she was offered a donation of £5,000 for her campaign. With no party affiliation and immediate source of funding, that represented almost a third of her legal funding limit. It could make all the difference between winning and losing a tight seat.

Instead she sent it back. Not because she disagreed about fundamental issues of policy with the donor - in fact, they both supported staying in the EU. Or that the cash was in any way tainted - it was a respectable enough tax-paying business. She gave the money back because she did not want to be in anybody's pocket.

Claire Wright, left, with an undamaged board` (Image: Keith Rossiter)

Claire Wright has stood as an Independent in East Devon three times and lost three times. If she does stand again it will be as an Indepedent.

"I would never join a party," she says. "I'm not in the slightest bit interested in joining a party. I never have done and never will do. I don't want to be told what to think, what to do, what policies to have. The whole of my political career I have represented people based on the issues that they tell me and want me to work on. Even in local government they is a party whip. I can't suffer a party whip, I'm far too feral. I'm interested in ploughing my own furrow and I'm interested in doing something new and different and that is not joining a political party.

"I've never really been someone who doesn't speak their mind. I do appreciate that it is much easier for an Independent to be like that because you have no line to take and no one from above telling you what to do."

This was a generation defining election. One where the divide throughout the country was laid bare. As an independent Claire is a curiosity, an alternative shade to Labour red and Tory blue. That's what makes meeting her interesting.

The rain is lashing down in apocalyptic fashion. I wonder what the climate will be when I get inside Herbie's restaurant in North Street. I was present at Westpoint a week ago when the results of the 2019 General Election for East Devon were announced. I saw triumphant Conservative Simon Jupp give his winning speech after retaining the seat for his party for the the 9,837th consecutive year (actually its just 174). It was always going to be a big ask to triumph against those historic odds.

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During the six week campaign she experienced creeping hope, expectation, crushing despair and tears. There was even some expletive-bombing movie stardust when, bizarrely, Hugh Grant popped up in Sidmouth. Now we have the aftermath. I want to know if this is the end game. Whether she's really prepared to do it all again in the future.

"I haven't made a decision yet," she says.

"To be honest, we all put our hearts and soul into that campaign, we couldn't have done any more. Every single thing we covered. It was a texbook, model election campaign on every level. But ultimately the national picture meant that I wasn't able to get elected."

That would be Mr Corbyn then and Brexit.

"I think if the national picture had been different, if there as a different Labour leader, perhaps one more centrist. If there wasn't Brexit. But it is if, if, if. Every election you run there's always going to be something that is going to be difficult to overcome. I could run again in five years and the exact same thing could happen so I don't know what I'm going to do yet."

That might disappoint the 25,869 voters who chose Claire on the ballot. That represented a 5.1 per cent increase in the share of the vote from 2017 - which in itself had been massively more than 2015.

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"At the moment I just feel strongly that I need a new and different challenge and there is an idea that I am pursuing with a couple of colleagues. One of the things that happened to me after the both the 2015 and 2017 General Election is that I got quite down, quite low for several months afterwards. I just felt like 'what am I doing with my life?' Like there was a bit of meaning that had left my life.

"When you are in an election campaign like that it is all consuming. It totally consumes you and the team you are working with. So when it's its gone its just like falling off a cliff edge. The camaraderie is gone, the energy is gone, the positivity is gone and you're just left going 'What am I going to do with my life?' So this time I anticipated that and I haven't actually felt like that to be honest, I'm actually all right. I have other ideas I'm pursuing and that is making me feel positive and excited about what happens next."

Simon Jupp

At this point a fellow diner, overhearing our conversation, stops for a chat and let's Claire know he would vote for her again if she did stand. I ask why and he gives me a very reasonable explanation based on her virtues of honesty and trust. For a few minutes we stray into cosy land. There is little doubt that Claire has the respect of many constituents in East Devon, and the votes of a fair few (40 per cent at the last election). I suspect even her political opponents have a sincere regard for her. Not only because of the gumption it takes to stand as an Independent but because of her genuinely held beliefs - environmental, increased spending on public services, looking after the weakest in society etc. But I want to get the conversation back onto despair, misery, cheating and back-stabbing rivalry if I can.

"I was very clear that I wanted to run a positive campaign," says Claire. "All of my communications were positive and I felt like people wanted to be inspired. What I really dislike about national politics, in terms of the campaigns, which I think is particularly corrosive is the negative campaigning. The mud slinging. I just think it's really awful. I knew I wanted to be someone who people wanted to vote for because [of something positive] as opposed to be someopne who threw mud at other candidateas.

"Simon Jupp didn't throw anything at me. Hugo Swire was terrible and unpleasant but then he's always been like that."

This is more like it. Sir Hugo Swire was the Conservative MP for East Devon for 18 years before stepping down shortly before this election. Of course, politics can be rough and criticism comes with the territory. Sir Hugo was scathing about Claire's celebrity support.

"You only have to look at his Twitter feed to see the stuff he was saying about me. I used to reply in times gone by but it's not worth responding to because it only gives it fuel. He would put something up and so many people would reply and defend me which was really kind of them to do that."

She says she doesn't take the criticism personally. Ten years as a councillor facing the massed ranks of a Conservative majority has to build a thick skin. And it seemed that after a decade of constructing that resolve and campaigning for favoured East Devon causes the prize of becoming the constituency MP was tantalisingly close.

"I thought I was going to win," she says. "I thought I was going to win the whole time. I don't mind admitting that, I said it enough times.

"This time last week I was walking around West Hill door knocking basically for six weeks it was non-stop canvassing.

"We started preparing in August 2018. I just had this idea in my head that this one was going to be the one. I was going to win and this was my time after two election campaigns and ten years of being a councillor, and it just felt like the right time to get elected and that was what people wanted. We thought it would be really close - but we thought it was going to happen."

And just when things looked like they couldn't get any better The Prime Minister appeared. Not the real one, but a movie star sexy version of one. Hugh Grant, who played the PM in Love, Actually, decided we should all vote tactically to avoid Brexit and he liked the cut of Claire's jib.

Claire admits she had actually been in love with Grant as a 19-year-old watching the star in his floppy-haired pomp in Four Weddings and A Funeral before growing up serious and losing interest in his films.

His flying visit to East Devon generated much media attention.

"He's lovely. He's just like his character in Love, Actually and/or Four Weddings and/or Notting Hill. I was half expecting not to like him. I thought he might be a bit arrogant but as soon as I got chatting to him he was like what you see is what you get.

"He came on the 7:15am train, arrived here in Sidmouth at 11 then spent an hour with us and went back to London. I said to him on camera that I really appreciated that he was someone who had stood by his principles and done this because a lot of celebrities don't get involved in politics because of their fan base. And you can see on the video on his face he looks so touched when I say this. He was just really funny. He kept interjecting with funny quips and I thought 'you're exactly like you are in the films'.

Hugh Grant inside Flo and Us (Image: Richard Austin)

The first signs that voters in East Devon, a constituency covering Ottery St Mary and Sidmouth in the east and Cranbrook and Topsham to the west, were not as supportive as they seemed came two days before the election. Suddenly, canvassers encountered more closed doors as voters said they were sticking with the Tories. Claire thinks her constituents were spooked by the prospect of a Socialist takeover in Downing Street and retreated to the safe arms of the familier.

Come election day she was still confident of winning. But soon after arriving at the count it was obvious the votes were simply not there. For extra cruelty, a BBC exit poll forecast a 96 per cent certainty of her winning.

"At the verification it was very clear that I hadn't won. But after 45 minutes at the count I was told about this exit poll and I was thinking 'maybe there is about to be a massive change'. The media were talking about having a satellite truck come to my house the following day and I was like 'I'm not sure about this'.

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"It was my third parliamentary campaign and I have never cried at the count before, Obviously I've never won a parliamentary election so far but at the last two elections I pretty much knew I wouldn't win. This time I thought I was going to do it this. I actually did think if I didn't win it was going to be really close. I just felt really sad for myself and also for all the people who wanted me to be East Devon MP. I just kept thinking it's just same old story and I just felt really bad."

When the final reckoning came there was no room for doubt. Mr Jupp was returned with a vote of 32,577, a majority of 6,708.

The dust is still settling and Claire could yet run again. She expects the Government to make the most of its majority and see out its five year term. As an Independent she has the freedom to choose her next move. Then again as the song says 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'. 2024 seems a long way off, but you never know.